As the web address and the available items at the site appeared to be legitimate, online shoppers tweeted their outrage to Twitter, which eventually called the fashion label into action.

It turns out, however, that the website was selling knock-off A&F clothing and was run by Chinese owners, who were relying on an extremely poor older version of a popular Chinese-English translation program.

A similar incident occurred in 2007 for a dark brown couch available online, which when translated through the Kingsoft Corp Chinese-English program, provided the translation of 'N****r brown' instead of 'Dark brown'.

A&F have obviously been eager to distance themselves from the controversy and recently told TMZ: "We do not condone racist language. This is a counterfeit website and we have initiated legal proceedings to shut it down."

The fashion label have obviously been busy, as any attempts to reach the offending URL this afternoon have returned no such luck.